The Night Like Home
Home to me was never a place I knew like most. My first was the West. It was not the place to which I was born, yet I knew an attachment to it that was far beyond the roots of a birthplace. Texas gave me my childhood, my friends, my family, and my soul. As of yet, I have moved many times since then. The first move was the most painful. It ripped away the souls of my childhood, it tore apart my family. Since then, I have been aching for home again. I have not realized it; nay, many times not searched for it as much as my soul depended on its craving.
The night that felt like home for the first time since Texas, I felt such a rush of uncontrollable, outpouring emotions beyond what I could control or try to understand. That night was clothed with the rosy memory of half melted milkshakes and sleep-deprived minds. I still feel the touch of concrete under my feet when I ran to the car at midnight and talked again with an affinity that made me feel so loved. Home became our breath beneath the sky and our kisses under stars hidden by the light from the city beneath us. Home became our young bodies swimming nearly naked and dancing on the blankets and the wet grass. We ran blindly into something - something that felt like love. It was cold, it was warm, and it was lovely. And then it was four A.M. and that realization came that he felt like home to me. All I could do was smile. Something - tingling and delicate and golden - spread from inside me and blossomed outward through my limbs. Later, we lay again in that attic of mine and he held me once more before he left. I had not stopped thinking of him since. Those damned hours I know gave me far more than words or laughter.
The first night that felt like home was filled with a sense of belonging, with all the sense of being known. I have since tasted home in many more things. I have tasted it in ice cream on a corner store with friends beside me. I have tasted it in the lips of strangers. I have tasted it in the tears that burned their way onto my cheeks in moments of pure ecstasy. I have tasted it in the dirt that meets my toes, in the breath upon my eyelids, in the words that force my brain to stay awake at night. I have tasted it in the wind across my goosebumps and the screams that came from my gut, burning across the highway roar. Home has become something so obscenely exquisite. It has been born from the ripped seams of family structure, from the screams of searing pain that has plagued my houses. It has been born from the anger and the fists of a broken-hearted father, from the manipulation of a mother drunk on perceived love. It has been born from the imagination of a hopelessly romantic girl and the fantasies and the love she spent her time living in, the ones she drew up in her brain. It has been born of so much brokenness and twisted debauchery that a mind that would try to follow would surely fall victim to tears or insatiable loneliness.
But home is here. Home has been with me when I felt it not. Home rests with the souls around me, in the dirt of the earth, in a craving that strangles my love-deprived body. But no one may take it from me now, for I have claimed it as my own in holding it so loosely. It was only in losing my home to such brutal torture that taught me to find it in everything that could never be stolen from me.
I wish I could thank the boy that gave me home again with all the blessed pain and love and joy and history that begs to burst from behind my skin. I wish I could thank every wound that brought me crying every evil notion that forced me to my knees. I wish I could thank home and thank the world and thank those I hate, thank my parents, thank my lovers, thank my fellow souls with all the emotion in me that is dying for exposure. But I have only such a meek excuse for gratitude in words that fall flat on their face in stories that are barely stories and apologies that will never be apologies. I only hope such does not go unnoticed.
The first night that felt like home was filled with a sense of belonging, with all the sense of being known. I have since tasted home in many more things. I have tasted it in ice cream on a corner store with friends beside me. I have tasted it in the lips of strangers. I have tasted it in the tears that burned their way onto my cheeks in moments of pure ecstasy. I have tasted it in the dirt that meets my toes, in the breath upon my eyelids, in the words that force my brain to stay awake at night. I have tasted it in the wind across my goosebumps and the screams that came from my gut, burning across the highway roar. Home has become something so obscenely exquisite. It has been born from the ripped seams of family structure, from the screams of searing pain that has plagued my houses. It has been born from the anger and the fists of a broken-hearted father, from the manipulation of a mother drunk on perceived love. It has been born from the imagination of a hopelessly romantic girl and the fantasies and the love she spent her time living in, the ones she drew up in her brain. It has been born of so much brokenness and twisted debauchery that a mind that would try to follow would surely fall victim to tears or insatiable loneliness.
But home is here. Home has been with me when I felt it not. Home rests with the souls around me, in the dirt of the earth, in a craving that strangles my love-deprived body. But no one may take it from me now, for I have claimed it as my own in holding it so loosely. It was only in losing my home to such brutal torture that taught me to find it in everything that could never be stolen from me.
I wish I could thank the boy that gave me home again with all the blessed pain and love and joy and history that begs to burst from behind my skin. I wish I could thank every wound that brought me crying every evil notion that forced me to my knees. I wish I could thank home and thank the world and thank those I hate, thank my parents, thank my lovers, thank my fellow souls with all the emotion in me that is dying for exposure. But I have only such a meek excuse for gratitude in words that fall flat on their face in stories that are barely stories and apologies that will never be apologies. I only hope such does not go unnoticed.
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